


the demophon job

by trell (qunlat)



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Assassins & Hitmen, Canon Compliant, Gen, Heist, Pre-Canon, Space Opera
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-26
Updated: 2020-01-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:14:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22423912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qunlat/pseuds/trell
Summary: Zane is thirty, broke, and on the run; he's not about to turn down paying work.(In which there is a job, a betrayal, and Zane Flynt loses an eye.)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 19





	the demophon job

**Author's Note:**

> Contains implied (off-screen) eye horror.

Rox rings him about the job as Zane’s piloting through a stretch of sublight somewhere in the anterior stream of Canis Major, headed nowhere in particular except _away from the last gig_.

From a purely goal-oriented perspective the operation had been a success—the target’s brains smeared across the scenery can attest to that—but from a financial and keeping-his-head-attached-to-his-shoulders perspective it had ended in a bit of a wreck, which is why he’s now doing nineteen to the dozen through a dead sector, making blind jumps. He’d had to sacrifice a helluva lot of gear and a favorite cover identity to make it off-planet, and earned himself another bounty to boot.

All of which is unpleasant enough on its own, but the real kicker is that this is just the latest in a long string of disasters, ones that have him wondering whether he’s losing his edge and—worse—so broke that he’s starting to run low on _fuel._ For the past dozen jumps he’s been keeping a nervous eye on the fuel gauge, checking it nearly as often as he checks the proximity monitors for pursuit.

So he’s pretty on-edge when when the speakers announce the call, and nearly cuts the transmission on reflex. Being so easily contacted rather gives the lie to the deep space illusion of invisibility, and taking it would certainly spoil his efforts to be untraceable, making all those blind jumps moot.

But there’s a reason Rox has his secure line—a couple cold million good reasons, actually, what with the kind of jobs she’s tipped him off to before, gigs that make or break black ops careers. They’ve certainly gone a long way towards financing his, trust fund-like.

And what Zane really needs right now is a _payday_ , so.

He punches _Accept Call,_ and growls cheerfully, “Hey there, beautiful.”

Rox’s voice filters through ahead of her image, the vidplate suffused by a bright haze as the ship works to unscramble her signal. “That line works better if you wait until you can actually see who you’re talking to, sweetheart.”

“’S always gonna be true, darlin’, dealin’ with a fine thing such as yourself.” Zane grins as her image materializes over the dash, rendering a plump middle-aged woman wearing a massive faux fur and a facial expression more befitting of an ill-tempered wrestler. The sum total always puts him in mind of cross between a spiderant and a cushion, lavishly plush in an I’m-going-to-rip-out-your-organs-and-feed-on-them sort of of way. _Not_ his type, but he’d much rather keep on her good side. “See? Glowin’ as always.”

“And you’re cheeky, as always.” Rox shakes her head, but twitches a smile, so Zane counts it as a win. “You busy, blondie?”

 _Busy_ in blacks ops lingo meaning, _Are you on a job that’s too lucrative or too dangerous to abandon?_ Zane perks up, but plays it cool: “Maybe. Got a couple things lined up, nothin’ terribly excitin’.” Admitting to being unemployed and on the run doesn’t much flatter his professional image, even if he’s sufficiently strapped for cash that at this point he’d jump at an opening in janitorial. “Why, you got somethin’ for me?”

“And here I thought you’d hit me with one of the classics— _never too busy for you, my love, anything for you_ —no? Oh, well.” Rox gives a melodramatic sigh, then snaps right back to business. “Yes, I’ve got a job for you. Wetwork. ”

“Good pay?” Zane asks, alertly. “Where? I’ll see if it’s on my way.” His gaze flicks again towards the fuel gauge, which reads _17%_. That’s two percent lower than when he last dropped out of hyperspace, and low enough that he’s seriously starting to worry. On his way, ha—he’ll take this job no matter where it is, just by virtue of wallet agony.

Provided it’s this side of the Small Magellanic, anyway. _Shite._

_Really pushing it this time, Zane-boy._

Rox sniffs in false offense. “Please. Do I call you with table scraps? Of course it’s good pay.” She names a figure; Zane’s eyes widen involuntarily, though he manages to refrain from further displays of exuberance, such as leaping out of his seat and running whooping around the cabin. “Target’s on Demophon. One-third of the payment up front, rest on delivery. Initial funds wired to you when you’re in range of the local banking net. Interested?”

“For a pretty sum like that, I’d bounce on Warlord Karuu herself,” Zane says honestly. Then, his eyes narrowing: “What’s the catch?”

“I do so like a man who can balance enthusiasm with being quick on the uptake.” Rox gives him a sharp smile, paired with a downright appalling look from under her lashes. “You’re right, there’s a catch. The target is a high-profile Hyperion exec. Heavily guarded, surrounded by as many newscasters as bodyguards—you know the type.” A vague wave of her hand reveals pointed red nails, akin to a bloodied claw. “The only opportunity to take him out anytime soon will be at Demophon Anshin’s annual gala, entry to which is contingent on leaving one’s personal security at the door. It’s in two weeks; not a lot of time to prepare, but I figured you’d be up to the task.” The claw curls inward for inspection. “Of course, if you don’t think you can handle it . . .”

“I can handle it!” Zane is already pulling up his galaxy map, punching in Demophon to find the best route on his dwindling fuel. _One-third up front, yes!_ “You just send me the details, lovely, and I’ll give it a lash.”

“That’s what I like to hear.” Rox taps something into the holo displays wavering around her arm, and within seconds his comconsole blinks to indicate an incoming data transfer, several gigs worth of files.

Zane sends the data onto his firewalled external drive—he’s broke, not _stupid—_ and says, “Got it. Thanks, Rox.”

She nods, apparently in parting. Zane moves to cut the comm, but Rox interrupts with, “Oh, one more thing. The client wants a close eye kept on the target, so I’ll be monitoring in person at the gala. Call me once you’re on-planet, we’ll work things out.” Zane raises an eyebrow—he can’t recall Rox ever working a gig in person—but she doesn’t volunteer any further details, saying instead, “This is just one of a series of moves in a corporate coup, you understand. All in the timing, these things—they want to know in advance when you’re about to make the hit.”

“Sure. I can do that.” Hell, for that kind of money, if the client wants him to riverdance in high heels Zane’ll buy the damn shoes and sign up for lessons. He flashes Rox his best smile, and says, “Thanks for the in, gorgeous. See you on-planet.”

Rox raises an ironic brow. “Upgraded to ‘gorgeous’ now, am I?” She gives him a coy wave of her fingers. “Have fun, sweet thing.”

And vanishes, her image disintegrating into a shower of pixellated pink.

“‘Sweet thing!’” echoes Zane, sitting back to stare at the darkened vid plate in alarm. “Huh.” Granted, most of what he’s seeing by now is what his bank account balance is going to look like once he gets _paid_ , but—still. The notion of being Rox’s _sweet thing_ is distressing enough to win some screen time of its own.

He shakes his head clear, sets the external drive to scan the received files, and plots in a series of jumps in the direction of Demophon. The stars outside the viewport turn into a colorful smear, and Zane kicks back in his seat, his mind already galloping ahead to what he’ll be able to do with the cash. Fix both of the damaged drones, upgrade the digi-clone like he’s been planning, repair the faulty capacitor in his shield—dump this hunk of junk he’s flying for a ship that doesn’t predate the decade, maybe something with actual leather seats this time, by god . . . ! If he pulls off this job he’ll be right back on his way to the top, bounced back from his recent run of bad luck.

The drive beeps that it’s completed the scan, and Zane sits forward, pulling up the files. He pushes the list of excesses out of his mind: do the job _first_ , celebrate later. In the meantime he needs to prepare, and ensure that this time everything goes off without a hitch.

He opens the first file, and begins to read.

*

Demophon has always been one of his favorite places to work.

For a place so totally overrun with corporate slimeballs it’s pretty as a picture, an entire planet beholden to high technology’s sense of design. Whereas usually catching human civilization at a flattering angle takes killing the lights—literally, as much as figuratively—dropping out of hyperspace over Demophon presents him with an all-around glimmering marble, the sunlit side’s sparkling silver nearly a match for the umbra's gossamer black-and-gold. Not an ecumenopolis, but damn near; save for the seas breaking up the continent chains it’s all hi-rise metropoles, nary a tree to mar the glass and steel and urban spires. Zane’s personal taste tends more towards the classic, but it’s nice to look at, and he can always appreciate a sniper bolthole with a view.

Equally in the planet’s favor is the fact that anywhere that looks like _that_ has enough cash sloshing around to drown in, and corporate black ops is therefore practically considered a sport. Zane couldn’t swing a cat downside without hitting a plot, a hitman, and several dozen amateur spies, under which circumstances a _real_ professional—read, him—can disappear totally into the crowd, vanishing among bloodstained white collars.

All of which means that really Demophon isn’t much different from any _other_ rich capitalist shitehole in the six galaxies, except: the drinks are better, the rooms always come with a minibar, and the nightlife has _all_ the hit shows. The perfect place to do business, in sum, particularly when that business is murder.

The promised one-third of his payment comes through over the banking net as soon as he’s in local space, just as Rox had said. Zane watches the number on his account tick up to a far healthier-looking sum, and grins as he goes in for a landing at the orbital spaceport for Celeus, Demophon’s capital city. His ship he abandons in a weekly berth, taken out under the name of an expendable alter ego; all the gear he doesn’t care to replace goes with him, and Zane hitches a ride down on a commercial shuttle, thus ridding himself of the last traceable artefact of the last gig.

Soon as his boots hit the ground he calls Rox, and gets to work arranging the operation.

“First things first,” he tells her as he rides up to the fifty-sixth floor of his lofty city-center hotel, ECHO device jammed between his ear and his shoulder. The city sparkles outside the glass, the sun blazing bright overhead, and Zane’s left arm is laden with bags, his right hand paging through a holo-display of Rox’s files. “I’ve got t’case the place. There’s nothin’ in ’ere about the Anshin complex itself, and none o’ this stuff on his habits does us any good when the location’s already set.”

Rox drawls, “Knock yourself out.” She’s staying in an enormous suite at the pinnacle of the same hotel, and her tone suggests she’s already gotten into the complementary wine. “ _I_ have an invitation. No breaking and entering for me.” A mild note of interest enters her voice. “What’s your plan?”

Zane grins briefly. “Oh, you know.” The lift slows to a stop, dings, and opens; Zane shifts his largest bag to ease the strain on his shoulder, and steps jauntily off. “The usual. A little fast talkin’, a little charm, maybe a few well-placed bullets.”

“Right,” says Rox dryly. “Try to not get arrested.”

Zane ignores this lack of faith in his skills, offloads his bags at his well-appointed room—mini-bar stocked with the price equivalent of a used car, check—and heads out to scout the complex that morning, pausing only to change into civilian garb. He knocks back a packet of breath mints on the way out, the better to suppress the smell of a week’s worth of shipboard ready-meals.

Nothing but restaurant dinners once he gets paid, Vladof military rations be damned.

Anshin’s planetary headquarters proves to be a sprawling complex in the very heart of downtown, sleek white buildings straddling across multiple city blocks. The public offices lie within a triangular tower capped with a massive polyhedron glass dome, Anshin corporate logo revolving endlessly around it in red. Zane admires it as he strolls inside, and then shifts his attention to sizing up the vantage points and the exits.

The party, Rox has informed him, will take place right in the building’s enormous lobby, twenty floors down from the ostentatious glass ceiling. Plenty of possible sniper lofts, though most of them will only give him a clear shot to part of the floor; not ideal, when the target won’t have a set route. Zane wanders through the lobby, appreciates the vertigo-inducing grille of balconies overhead, smiles at the receptionist—she blushes, and smiles back—takes a spin around the walled central garden, and walks out at the end of the day with a full set of building schematics and an expired employee keycard, the former bribed from the janitor and the latter fished from the trash.

On the following day he comes back, and spends an hour chatting up the blushing receptionist. This wins him the identity of Anshin’s catering service, along with her number; she scrawls both down together on the same post-it, surrounded by several hasty hearts.

(Rox, inspecting the note that night at dinner—served in her suite, Zane cordially invited—arches a brow: “Going to take her up on it?”

“Ha!” snorts Zane, and tips back his wine. This place is so high-end that they serve the good stuff, and right now Rox is footing the bill; he’s going to indulge as much as her wallet can take. “’Course not. It’d be bad form, gettin’ a nice girl like that beheaded by Anshin.”

She’s certainly getting fired, anyway, once he makes the hit and the company reviews its security logs. He tosses the post-it note in the trash.)

The day after that the catering service gets a visit from a harried middle-manager, on errand from Anshin at the behest of his antsy superiors. The front-desk coordinator is sympathetic to his plight; Demophon Anshin, it appears, has a reputation for being a veritable tank of piranhas, and Huang’s Catering is more than happy to help out an anxious family man just scraping by at the bottom of the corporate ladder. Zane leaves with a set of detailed plans of the gala (freely given), a spare uniform (pilfered), and more than he’d ever wanted to know about the dietary needs of the Anshin corporate board of directors, half of whom asphyxiate in the presence of shellfish and the rest of whom have acquired an unprecedented taste for fresh lobster.

Zane fantasizes about offing the mark with the application of some lethal allergen the whole cab ride back to his hotel, but, alas: insofar as they know the Hyperion shill doesn’t have any convenient fatal reactions. Ah, well. More’s the pity.

The gala plans, meanwhile, prove significantly more fruitful. He spreads the to-scale map across his room’s coffee table, and immediately discovers that the vantage point he’d been considering is a no-go, forcing him to start over from scratch.

“Dull view?” Rox wants to know from where she’s lounging on the couch to observe.

Zane shakes his head. “Blocked by the bloody ice sculpture.” He points to the big blue blob on the plans, and reads out the accompanying notes on the dimensions. “I may be the best in the business, darlin’, but even I can’t shoot through five meters of solid ice.”

Why anyone would want to put up a house-sized statue of a ganky bowler like _that_ is beyond him, anyway. Someone as handsome as himself, sure, but _this_ guy? The Anshin exec in the artist’s rendering is a real bucket of snots, no two ways about it.

Zane flashes the picture at Rox, who makes a face. “ _Eugh_.” Zane agrees.

The rest of his week is spent holed up in his hotel room, drawing up plans and preparing his gear. The coffee table vanishes under pages of longhand geometry; disassembled tech gets scattered on top of that, and the well-stocked minibar grows increasingly less so.

It comes out pretty quickly that the only way to ensure clear shot to anywhere on the floor is by setting up on the maintenance walkways directly underneath the glass dome, where he might move as needed to keep the mark in his sights. Fine, then; Zane throws out the other options, and focuses his efforts on that.

Getting _up_ ought to be simple. With the filched catering uniform and some creative concealment for his rifle he should to be able to walk right in, and Anshin’s RIFD security is a breeze. The keycard Zane has procured confirms they use the same worthless system as every other corporate office that can’t be fucked to update its hardware, to wit: old-Atlas card readers that suffer from the fatal flaw of storing their digital key in their own internal memory, easily retrieved via portable programmer. All he needs to throw together one of those is some resistors, a battery, a microcontroller, and a last-gen Atlas power connector—do-it-yourself home electronics, ha—and voila, he’s got himself an all-access key.

Really, Zane thinks, he’s doing Anshin a favor. Maybe after he ghosts past their security they’ll at least update their locks.

Getting out, now, that promises to be more of a challenge. Anshin, the chatty receptionist had revealed, contracts out their ex post facto security to a local firm; a brief delve into their offerings is sufficient to convince him that they’re one of the very few cadres of hired killers on-planet who aren’t fucking around. Cerulean Mamba Unlimited specializes in corporate liquidation, and their loadout is sure to reflect that; Zane can still take them, but not without making a _serious_ splash. Better to avoid them entirely, and focus on exiting fast.

He comes up with a few options on how to do just that, and settles eventually on triggering a security alarm on the far side of the building. “What’s there?” Rox asks when he tells her, brows furrowing. “Back offices?”

“Not a chance. I’ll bet anythin’ it’s their R-’n-D—look ’ere.” Zane shows her where the blueprints go suddenly vague, offices giving way to a heavily-secured functional sector. “No way I’m breakin’ in there on a week’s notice”—no outdated RIFD readers back there, good on Anshin—“but I don’t need t’get in, I just need ’em to think that I’m tryin’. I’ll rig up my drone with this,” he pulls out his digistructor, tosses it spinning into the air, “’n _bam!_ They’ve got Zane Flynt on their cameras, tryin’ to break into the _Serious Research Zone._ ”

Rox makes a dubious face. “I’ve seen your clone before. Bright blue didn’t strike me as very convincing.”

“Handsome, though, no?” Zane grins; Rox rolls her eyes. “You’ve just never seen ’im when he’s not diverting power to combat systems, ’s all. Don’t worry, he’ll do.” With full power dedicated to putting on a good show the clone can pass for him right down to the heat signature, and Zane doesn’t need it to last very long: just enough to draw the attention of Anshin’s security goons, and put a few minutes’ run between him and them.

“Hmm,” says Rox, but doesn’t argue further. “Well. Is that it?”

Zane surveys his clusterfuck kingdom—empty bottles scattered across the floor, loose pieces of wiring and circuitry spread over the couch, the coffee table’s existence long since become a question for Schrödinger—and says, “Yeah. Yeah, ’s it. Client better be ready tomorrow.”

“They will be,” says Rox, and smiles her barracuda smile. She leaves as he starts fixing together the drone and digistructor, door sliding closed in her wake. “See you at the gala.”

Zane grunts agreement, finishes making his modifications, and spends the day before the night of the gala catching up on sleep and broadcast dramas. (Six months of murder and mayhem have put him _seriously_ behind on both.) The minibar gets a pass; he _can_ pull a hit while totally scuttered, but with his track record lately he’s not about to go pushing his luck.

On the night of the gala he loads out his gear, and takes a taxi to Anshin.

*

Done up for the party the Anshin complex is different beast altogether, opulently glitzy, spotlights raking the sky and polyhedron rooftop aglow. A classic red carpet runs from the street to the entrance, and it’s plain from the spectators jamming the sidewalk that the tabloids hadn’t been kidding about this being the premier social event of the year. Reporters cluster near the red carpet, each trailed by one or more spherical camera drones, blue cyclops eyes flashing at the big-name arrivals; limousine groundcars headed for the red carpet are backed up clear to the other side of downtown, and pedestrians press close around those.

Zane takes in the spectacle as he heads around to the service entrance on foot, straightening the cuff of his caterer’s uniform. His drone—a glance at his wristcom confirms—is exactly where it’s supposed to be, hovering on the far side of the building. He’ll keep it out of range until it’s needed, ready to swoop in to stage his distraction.

Rox, for her part, is already inside, probably _mingling_. She’d certainly been dressed for it when he’d caught sight of her outside the hotel, climbing into her cab; the gaudy faux fur had made another appearance, worn over a vermillion number that in Zane’s private opinion seems likely to come to life and devour the other guests. Typical Rox, carnivore done up in silk.

All things considered, he’s glad to be skipping the party.

The service entrance is abuzz with activity when he arrives, even more hectically busy than the front of the building. Caterers in crisp black and white rush back and forth between a dozen trucks and the door, and even the ones shouting orders aren’t wasting time on standing around. Based on the plans Zane’s read the army deployed tonight by Huang’s could outmatch some corporate forces, and they’re stretched thin despite that, scrambling to deliver the desired level of excess.

His matching uniform renders him nicely invisible, and Zane drifts naturally through the crush, seizing upon the first unused serving cart he spots once inside. His gear bag goes under the cloth, and he pushes off down the hall with an apologetic shrug at a caterer who just misses her grab. “Sorry, darlin’, boss said to take this one thataway . . .”

The cart clears his way down the corridor, servitors weaving around him. No security here—anyone fool enough to come down would probably be drafted to help—though most of the caterers are visibly packing; Huang’s must expect its employees to hold their own in a fight.

Zane counts his turns, lining up the map in his head with the real thing. Just a few more and the airy glamor of the area surrounding the twenty-story balconied lobby ought to give way to standard offices, full of things like conference rooms and elevators and emergency stairs. His interest lies primarily in the latter: the portable programmer can bypass a lift just as easily as a door, but the bays are bound to be full of security goons, posted there to keep nosy guests from wandering off. In the stairwells all he’ll have to contend with is cameras, and he has a gadget for _those._

He’s just nearing the edge of the caterer bustle when a voice booms, “ _You!_ Stop right there!”

Zane whirls, already opening his mouth to rattle off some bullshit excuse—

—and finds himself face-to-face with an enormous woman in a double-breasted chef’s smock, looming over him with a thunderous expression. “What do you think you’re doing,” she demands, and Zane leans automatically back, hands up in placating gesture. “It’s all hands on deck, mister! Never mind what you think you’re doing—get on unloading those coolers!”

A single meaty finger jabs him in the chest, and the giantess’ other hand gestures vehemently back towards the trucks. Zane takes fully a second to process that he _hasn’t been made,_ and gets out, “Uh—love to, ma’am! Only, er—” He thinks fast. His gear is stowed on the cart; attempting to make a circuit outside to assuage the managerial wrath is bound to result in someone taking it, leaving him in a bad position indeed. He can just picture some unfortunate caterer rolling up to a table and reaching for the spare forks, only to find his sniper rifle and various lethal gimmicks, instead . . . “Manager Qiang,” he’d seen that name on the plans, right, that ought to be the man running this circus, “told me t’get my arse down to the east side post haste, if I’m partial to keepin’ my thumbs.” He flashes the woman his most winning smile. “Said they need an extra pair of hands setting up for the guest of honor, y’know.”

“What?” she says, her brow furrowing further. “You telling me they’re still not _finished_ down there? _Shit_. Yes, go, go, god damn it! Goddamn Qiang—always behind schedule—”

Zane doesn’t stick around to hear the rest of this aggrieved litany, ducking gratefully away with the cart. He hurries down the hall, and doesn’t slow until he turns another corner, blowing out a sigh once he’s out of the manager’s line of sight. All hands on deck, good god; talk about colossally embarrassing ways for his operation to flop.

_Head in the game, boy-o._

Back on track, he makes a few more turns, the hallways growing emptier as he gets further into the interior of the complex. At last he pauses outside a conference room door; the bulbous black eye of a security cam watches him from the end of the hall, and Zane makes a show of glancing over his shoulder before withdrawing a pack of cigarettes from his uniform pocket. Bright red, impossible to miss— _Pay no heed to the man bunkin’ off fer a fag, that’s right._ He leaves the cart in the hall, and leans open the door.

Inside isn’t surveilled, so he’s able to go straight for the jacks bristling from the central table, various access ports for whatever it is that people working in offices do. A gizmo produced from his pocket gets plugged into one of these; Zane throws himself into a nearby chair, and spends fifteen minutes doing nothing at all, as much for verisimilitude as to let the gadget do its gadgety thing.

When the requisite fifteen minutes have passed he gets up, sets the gadget to feed the footage it’s just sucked out of the system into the cameras along his route—starting about five minutes from now, because of course he needs Anshin to see him leave—and kills the lights, shouldering back out the door. He reacquires the cart, and heads back from where he’d come, gizmo abandoned.

On getting back to the more populous hallways Zane stops, waits to be passed by a concealing group of rushed servitors bearing trays, and dives back into the emptier hallway, grabbing the bag from its concealed place as he goes. By now this hallway’s camera is getting the looped feed, and he can go the rest of his way undisturbed, invisible to the eyes in the ceiling.

Still, on the off-chance of running into someone in person he waits until he’s cheated his way past the stairwell RIFD lock to shed the servitor’s uniform, pulling it off in the dark. He swaps it out for his usual reinforced jacket, stowed until now in the bag, transfers a variety of lethal and nonlethal gadgets into the pockets, and hits his comm as he re-shoulders his satchel. “I’m inside. Headin’ up now.”

“About time,” Rox says in his ear. And, as he starts up the stairs, taking them two at a time, “Not that I’m not having a lovely time hanging about with the locals. Fantastic hors d’oeuvres. What’s your ETA?”

“Ten minutes t’ get up there, ten more t’ get in position.” The stairwell’s only illumination comes from the pinprick lights lining the steps and the red EXIT signs over the doors, but fortunately Zane doesn’t need to see the floor numbers or count the levels; his stop is the furthest up, directly under the roof. “Client wants to know ’fore I make the hit, I know.”

“Mhm. Speaking of which, I’ve got eyes on the mark. Just flouncing in now—full entourage of corporate flunkies, but he ought to shed them once he starts greasing palms. Tell me once you’re up top.”

“Sure thing,” agrees Zane, and cuts the com, because there’s no point in wheezing over the mic while he jogs up twenty flights of stairs lugging a fifty-pound rifle.

Damned if he doesn’t wish he’d risked the elevator bay _now_.

_Tradeoffs, Zane-boy, tradeoffs. Think about how much you’re gonna get paid . . . !_

*

The exit at the top of the stairs proves to be just as flimsily locked as the rest, opening right out onto the maintenance platform under the dome. Zane slips quietly through, and takes his first look around.

Walkways anchored in the dome lattice lace from one side of the lobby triangle to the other, each intersected in several places by ones starting from the far side. Overhead the polyhedron expands into a massive black sky, and angled-up colored lights set into the paths reflect off the lattice, odd lines of color falling across the platform. This far up the party is hardly audible at all, only the occasional high sound reaching from below.

Zane drops to a crouch, and proceeds towards his intended position, which lies about two-thirds of the way out over the drop. The walkway wobbles alarmingly under his weight, swaying with each step; an acrophobe’s nightmare, but Zane didn’t get into the business of killing people from high altitude places by being afraid of heights.

Even if the whole structure _does_ creak like it’s about to collapse. _Steady, now._

He reaches the spot without incident, and kneels to extract his modular rifle, locking the pieces together. The gut-wrenching drop has its benefits: between the distance and the glare of the lights that line the underside of the balconies nobody’s going to be able to see him, giving him plenty of time to line up a shot.

Habit makes short work of the assembly, and he comms Rox while he sights down the bore to align the sight: “In position.” Hyperion software handles the finer task of zeroing the scope, sweet irony that. “Where’s the mark?”

“Out in the gardens,” reports Rox. “Peeled off his swarm of assistants as soon as he spotted his first Anshin exec, as I anticipated.” A pause, and then, “Looks like he might be a while. Keep an eye on the north door, and I’ll alert you as soon as he’s headed inside.”

“Aye.” Zane unfolds the rifle’s miniature bipod, and stretches out on the walkway. Once the platform is still—no use looking down while it’s moving, the view bound to lurch dizzyingly back and forth—he peers through the scope at the exit, and swears.

In his ear, Rox says, “What?”

“Bloody lot o’ bystanders.” He looks again through the scope, spotting at once the cause of the bodies clustered around the garden’s double doors: a fondue fountain, chocolate cascading over the stylized letters of the Anshin logo. Located near the door to keep the heat from seeping towards the ice statue, no doubt, but the unfortunate result is upwards of a dozen people likely to wander through his line of fire. “No way I’m gettin’ a clean shot there. ’Nless . . .” He trails off, reaching into his jacket.

“Unless _what,”_ demands Rox, while Zane balances awkwardly on one elbow to root through his inner breast pocket. A moment of digging finds what he’s looking for: a microminiaturized version of his combat drone, shorter than his thumbnail and about half as wide.

Rifling next for the controller, he grunts, “ _’Nless_ , I can get ’em to scram. Ah!” His fingers close around the little box. “What’s our man doin’ out there?”

“Taking a stroll around the pond with an Anshin high-roller. Judging by the amount of bootlicking going on, you’ve got at least ten minutes until they loop back around.” Rox pauses suspiciously. “Mind telling me what you’re planning?”

“Ngk,” says Zane, because he’s holding the drone with his teeth while he pries open the controller. It takes several tries, but at last the case clicks open; the bottom unfolds into three rings arranged for the hand, and the top reveals a recess housing a digital contact lens. Zane pops the lens into his eye, blinks several times to settle it against his cornea, and drops the drone into his palm. Then he tells Rox, “I’m gonna implement plan _bee_.”

The pun—naturally—sails clear over her head. “Which is what, exactly?”

“Nothin’ explosive, don’t worry.” Zane fits the controller rings over his right hand, and blinks again as the overlay springs up in his left visual field, drone buzzing to life in the same moment. It flits up from his palm with a faint whine, not unlike that of an insect. “You just tell me when the mark’s headed this way.”

He squeezes shut his right eye, and sends the drone zipping down to ground level.

When it’s only a meter or two above the heads of the guests he brings the little robot to a halt, and spends a moment choosing his target. Better not to try this on anyone likely to smack the drone out of the air—it’s meant for surveillance, not combat—though most of the suit-clad partygoers huddled around the fountain don’t seem like the athletic type. All those gelled haircuts and clipped ties suggest they’re the sort to hire out their strenuous exercise, possibly up to and including fending off flies.

After a moment’s consideration he settles on a woman with a martini glass chatting up a man in Anshin white, situated at the end of the table. The drone comes to hover at her shoulder, flitting up and down with the occasional dart towards the fountain.

The Anshin man notices, the drone’s audio feedback catching him saying, “Watch out, there’s a wasp.”

“Where!” cries the martini woman, and jolts away, the motion much exaggerated in Zane’s fisheye point of view. He sends the drone following along, true to its mimicked species: persistent, and entirely too close for comfort. “Oh, for god’s sake—let’s just go outside—”

They decamp, and Zane grins in satisfaction. _Two down, eight more to go._

Reminded, he pauses to touch a control on his wrist, sending his _real_ drone to initiate his distraction while he continues his campaign of harassment. He’s programmed it well, so it shouldn’t need further direction; within a moments his digi-clone will put on a very convincing show of Zane Flynt trying to break into the back of the complex, and hopefully draw away any excess security. Anshin will probably need a few minutes to scramble its people back to R&D—starting now ought to give them sufficient time.

Escape plan put into motion, Zane refocuses on maneuvering the would-be bee, and targets his next trio of in-the-way guests.

Within a few minutes he’s managed to clear six of the eight individuals still inconveniently clustered around the fountain, leaving only two corporate shills at the innermost end of the table. He’s silently debating whether it would be more convenient to leave them to obstruct further passerby when Rox says, “Target’s done buttering up the Anshin exec,” and, “getting himself more wine, but he looks like he’s headed back.”

“Right,” says Zane, and promptly recalls the mini-drone, sending it back up towards him at speed. It whacks painfully into his palm when he holds out a hand to catch it, and he winces as he folds up the controller and takes out the digital lens. Everything gets stuffed summarily back into his pockets, and he hurries to resettle behind the rifle. “Ready here.”

“Better be, sweet thing, ’cause he’s heading for the door now.” Rox hums. “Make it clean.”

“No such thing as a clean bullet through the head, y’know that,” says Zane, and stops talking. He breathes in—breathes out—forces his heart steady with each even inhalation, and trains his rifle on the stretch of now-empty floor by the exit. His finger flexes lightly on the trigger, universe narrowing to match his field of vision: once he makes the shot he’ll have to move, make his escape, but until then there’s only him and the mark and where the mark is going to be. The nebulous future is severed from his attention, excess data filtered ruthlessly out. Zane aims, and waits for the moment of truth.

The mark steps through the door.

He looks much as he does in all the materials provided by Rox: broad-shouldered, trim, black beard and blocky eyebrows, smarmy Hyperion smile. He’s holding a wine glass as he wanders lazily in, and Zane tracks him until he pauses beside the fountain.

Zane breathes in—

—breathes out—

—and fires, sniper rifle kicking savagely against his shoulder.

The mark’s head explodes.

“ _Nice_ shot,” says Rox.

Pandemonium breaks loose below.

Shouting and terrified shrieks bounce up from the lobby, echoing the sudden cacophony picked up by Rox’s comm. Somebody must shove her in panic, because she curses and says, “Ow!” the sound lost under someone else’s scream.

Zane doesn’t stick around to appreciate the chaos; just scrambles up to his feet, hits the safety on the rifle, and hefts it over his shoulder as he jogs towards the stairwell. _This_ is the part that’s going to get dicey: bailing out the route he’s chosen sans further engagements is certainly possible, but he knows damn well that no plan survives contact with the enemy. He yanks his pistol free of its holster, and engages the power cartridge as he runs.

If he’s lucky, by now most of Anshin’s security will be on the far side of the building, clearing his path back to the side entrance. If he’s lucky—

The door to the stairwell bursts open, and reveals that tonight his luck is _rotten._

Three white-clad Anshin security commandos leap out, one charging directly towards towards Zane while the others break to flank along adjacent walkways. Zane skids, swearing, and twists around to sprint full-tilt in the opposite direction, aiming for the secondary exit at the triangle’s farthest point. Live cameras in there, but it sure as hell doesn’t matter if Anshin sees him _now._

And how _is_ it that their security goons are already here, he’d like to know, there’s no way they’ve got that kind of response time, not unless they’d been _waiting_ —

The conclusion breaks through his adrenaline like blood splashed across glass. “You no-good double-crossin’ floozie!” Bullets ring off the walkway behind him, and he dumps the sniper rifle in favor of firing his pistol over his shoulder. “You ganky scanger, you sold me out!”

“Now, _that’s_ not very nice.” He can hardly make out her voice over the gunfire and the clash of his own boots against the walkway, but the smug lilt gets across _fine_. “Whatever happened to ‘gorgeous’?”

“Why, you—” One of Zane’s shots finds its mark; the commando trying to flank him from the right goes down, the whole maintenance rig shuddering terrifyingly from his collapse. The other commandos pause in alarm; Zane takes advantage by not stopping at all, still headed hell-for-leather for the far door. _“What t’ hell for?”_

“Really, sweet thing, have you _seen_ your bounty?”

Several shots impact forcefully off Zane’s shield from behind, and he staggers, winded, before regaining his balance. He’s going to have some _spectacular_ fucking bruises, after, provided he makes it to the door fast enough for them to _only_ be bruises—“Damn it, tell me who you sold me out to!”

“I think,” Rox says thoughtfully, “I’m going to let it be a _surprise_.”

And then the door he’s running towards slams open, and more Anshin commandos pour out.

Zane’s eyes widen in disbelief; his frantic gaze takes in at least twelve new opponents, all of them already taking aim. Doesn’t take a genius to do _that_ math: he drops his pistol, and throws his hands in the air. “I surrender! I surrender, don’t _shoot!”_

Rather to his surprise, this actually works: the gunfire stops, and nobody shoots him for the sin of no longer being a moving target. One of the commandos barks, “Hands behind your head!” and their surrounding advance takes on a warier pace.

Zane obliges—nice and slow—and tries desperately to guess who it is he’s surrendering _to._ It’s not Anshin; he’s never taken a job against the shield manufacturer, so they’re certainly only the middleman, probably for a sizeable cut. The fact that he’s not presently riddled with bullets narrows the possibilities down to the half dozen corporations that have bounties out specifically for his live capture, but that’s still too many to choose from, even discounting the ones that don’t get on with Anshin. Besides which, Anshin could just as easily use him as a peace offering or an overture towards a merger, so really he shouldn’t discount them at all . . .

_A merger?_

A dim memory of Vladof announcing their interest in expanding into personal defense collides head-on with his first-hand knowledge that the CEO is still prodigiously cheesed off about his having offed their VP of sales. The results are—fireworks. “It’s Vladof, isn’t it!” he growls into his comm. He could just see Anshin using him to pave the way for a full-on monopoly in Triangulum, oh, yeah. “Rox, you absolute gobshite! Tell me if it’s Vladof!”

Her reply is sweet as poisoned sugar. “You’ll find out soon enough. Ta!”

She cuts the comm, and Zane is left alone with the converging commando squadron, two of whom—a trooper and the one who’d been shouting, who Zane dubs Head Goon—approach him from both ends of his walkway. The rest stay spread to provide covering fire, weapons still trained squarely on him.

Zane swallows an expletive, and drops Rox temporarily out of his mind, focusing on the situation at hand. Distant sounds of panic still rise from below, and the goons look _exceedingly_ unfriendly, like maybe somebody’s given orders to the effect of _don’t worry if you break a few of Flynt’s bones._

Only one way to deal with that, so: Zane musters his most friendly cheer, and smiles at the Head Goon as he approaches. “Hey, there—not fightin’ back, over here. Mister Cooperative, that’s me.”

This fails to elicit any response, Head Goon’s expression set in determined aggression. Zane’s heart sinks; this one’s clearly of the variety that doesn’t believe in _thinking_ about orders, just their execution, in every sense of the term. “Don’t move,” growls Head Goon, and jerks his head at the trooper coming up on him from behind. “Check him for weapons.”

Zane finds himself getting frisked with brutal efficiency, his miniaturized arsenal piled carelessly out onto the walkway. “Y’know, usually I like to get people’s names before I let them start feelin’ me up.” Glumly, he wonders if he’s going to see any of the gadgets ever again. Most are just expensive toys, but a few are his own inventions, the product of grueling hours of meticulous work. He’s got backups of the code, sure, but the hardwiring—“Careful with that!” he yelps, barely keeping from starting forward as a careless toss by the trooper almost sends the mini-drone over the edge.

“Anything else?” asks the Head Goon, scowling densely. Zane suppresses a sigh: if only they were _smart_ hired muscle, he’d have a shot at talking them into distraction. No chance of that with this prime exemplar of brawn-over-brains.

“Think that’s everything.” Zane feels a momentary hope, only to have it extinguished as the trooper says, “Wait, no,” and yanks his last concealed knife out of his boot. It clatters onto the walkway next to the rest of his things. “There.”

Zane’s arms are wrested painfully behind his back—“Ow,” says Zane—and his wrists locked together with magnetic cuffs, their weight suggesting they’re the kind more commonly used for restraining dangerous alien lifeforms. He’s obscurely cheered by the excess. “I’m flattered everyone thinks I’m so dangerous. Not that they’re wrong, o’course,” he favors Head Goon with another sunny smile, “but this does suggest your employer’s expectin’ to take me a rather long way. I don’t suppose you might be able tell me who they’re sellin’ me to?”

Head Goon ignores this, and makes a wrap-it-up gesture at the trooper. “Let’s go. Boss wants him delivered fast.”

Zane’s next attempt to stall is halted by the unmistakeable press of a pistol to the back of his head, the barrel cold. “Hey, now,” he starts, meaning to point out that this is all rather a lot of wasted effort if they’re just going to shoot him anyway—

And then the trooper pulls the trigger, and Zane plunges into unconsciousness faster than he can think _stunner._

*

He wakes to a pounding headache, and is pleasantly surprised to find that he doesn’t feel wretchedly sick along with it, suggesting that someone has dosed him with synergine. Zane appreciates it for all of the several minutes it takes him to come around, the point-blank stun slow to wear off.

The pleasant surprises end there, because the next thing that comes to his attention is the fact that he’s strapped to a table, arms and legs securely bound.

Ah. So this is going to be one of _those._

 _Shite_.

He can tell from the white wall of pain boring its way through his eyelids that he’s got a bright light directly overhead, so he doesn’t open his eyes to speak, remarking—not to anyone in particular, though hopefully to _someone,_ it’s always embarrassing when it turns out to be an empty room with a vid feed—“Bit forward, tyin’ a man up on a first date. I prefer to wait ’til at _least_ the second.”

A melodic voice from his right says, “Ah,” accompanied the sound of somebody standing. Zane hears the blip of a comm channel being opened. “Vivian, do come down. He’s awake.”

He’s a little miffed at his opening line being ignored, but— _Vivian?_ Zane’s pretty sure he doesn’t know any Vivians. Racking his brain fails to dislodge up any relevant sound memory besides the obvious, _Vivian Zhao,_ overheard during any number of background noise news reports on the Anshin CEO duo. But Anshin’s galactic headquarters is half-way across the nexus, and given that they’ve got to be the middleman it doesn’t make sense for them to be waking him up. So who—

His attempt to say something like _If you’re looking to hire my services, this isn’t a very good way to get in touch_ is interrupted by the sound of a door hissing open, and a rapidly approaching rap of a set of high heels. The voice from before says hurriedly, “Vivian,” and Zane doesn’t quite manage to peel open his eyes before somebody’s hand strikes his face.

“ _Yeowch!”_ His eyes snap open at the blow, and he’s momentarily blinded by the overhead light, slicing straight into his brain. “ _Augghh—_ what was that for—”

“Really, Vivian,” says the first voice, “was that necessary?”

“It made me feel better,” says a new voice, one that Zane definitely _does_ recognize from the newsreels, “so—yes.”

“We’ve never even _met before_ ,” complains Zane, eyes still squeezed shut.

“And yet you’ve already managed to cause substantial financial harm to my corporation,” says Vivian Zhao. “Funny, how that happens.”

Zane finally manages to pry open his eyes, and squints painfully up at his captor. His first thought is that she’s taller than she looks in the newsreels, though his perspective is admittedly skewed; the flood lamp over his head is the sole source of light in the room, and it casts Zhao in sharp relief against the dim, making her loom over him as she shakes out her hand. Mostly she looks like the vids—imperious expression, holo-overlay glasses—but in person she’s six feet tall, which he somehow hadn’t expected.

His _second_ thought is that he can’t imagine why _she’s_ the public face of Anshin, when her brother looks _like that._

Even in the low light Curtis Zhao is breathtaking, beautiful in the way that turns heads. Standing behind his sister he looks like he’s been airbrushed into existence by a team of boyband publicists, all dark hair and sharp features and pretty eyes. Had Zane encountered him anonymously at a bar he’d have made a pass in a heartbeat, and probably followed it up with a prayer, ’cause, _wow:_ he suddenly gets what people mean when they say _supermodel looks._

As it is he spends fully three seconds with his mouth open, and then blurts, “You two oughta _fire_ your public relations director.”

Vivian scoffs in disgust, turning away. The corner of Curtis’ mouth curls up. “We get that a lot,” he tells Zane. “Alas, my forte lies outside the spotlight.”

“You tellin’ me you’re the beauty _and_ the brains?” asks Zane incredulously. _If that’s true, sweetheart, what all was left for your sister . . . ?_

“Silence,” snaps Vivian, and Zane shuts his mouth before any further idiocies can escape. He takes the few spare seconds while she paces to the end of the room to steal a glance around, though the contrast of the light overhead rather obscures his surroundings.

What he is able to make out suggests a standard infirmary, slab in the center, cabinets on the left, door on the right. (Curtis sinks fluidly into a chair next to the door, and Zane curses the universe once again for making the evil ones so attractive.) Parked near the end of the slab is a cart bearing an odd-looking implement, rather like an ice cream scoop with surface electrodes.

It doesn’t look like any medical or torture device that Zane’s ever seen, but he doesn’t get to contemplate it further, Vivian coming to a stop at his feet. “Today,” she intones solemnly, “we are going to talk about consequences _._ ”

“Lady, stop right there.” Zane tests the bonds as he speaks, trying to twist his right arm. “Far as I know, I’ve never taken a job ’gainst your corporation. In fact,” absolutely no give whatsoever, damn, “I’m feelin’ very confused ’bout this whole thing. Obviously my contact sold me out”— _goddamn_ Rox—“but the only people I’m aware of wantin’ me dead are, lesse, Hyperion, Hephaestus—Maliwan, Pangolin—’n the Obsidian Block, as of two weeks ago. You must know by now that the mark tonight was Hyperion, so why I’m wakin’ up in _Anshin_ hands is beyond me.”

Or waking up at all, for that matter, but no reason to point that out.

Vivian’s face snaps from cold concentration into rage with no in-between phase. “Don’t play dumb with me, you rat bastard! You blew up our facility on Eunomia, _annihilating_ half of our endgame prototypes slated for release for the following year! We lost _billions_ in irreplaceable R-and-D—I’ll show you why you’re waking up in Anshin hands—!”

She grabs the weird-looking implement off its tray, and lunges around the corner—only to be caught by her brother, Curtis coming smoothly to his feet. “This isn’t going to work if we don’t have the talk,” he reminds her.

Zane, meanwhile, says, “I did?” And then, the memory dawning on him at last, “Ohhh, shite, I did, didn’t I! To get those Hyperion bastards off my tail while I was pullin’ that job for Pangolin! _Shite,_ I never even thought about that.” At Vivian’s livid stare, he tries, “Sorry . . . ?”

Vivian grits out, “I want to hurt him _now_ ,” but subsides at a look from her brother, drawing back to where she’d been at the foot of the slab. There she clears her throat, sets down the implement on the tray, and regains some of her previous measured tone. “Where was I? Oh, yes. Consequences _._ Now that we are all on the same page,” Zane finds himself on the receiving end of another withering glare, “we are going to talk about _consequences_.”

He grimaces. “Is this gonna be one of those, whaddyou call it, torture-’n-kill package deals? I’d just as soon skip the lecture, if it’s all the same to you.”

Vivian’s palms come down with a bang against the end of the slab, and she leans forward on her hands, head down, her breath coming out in a growl. “Brother, dear, if he doesn’t _stop talking_ —”

“Mister Flynt,” Curtis says mildly, “shut up.”

“D’you know, that’s what the Hyperion spooks said when they brought me in for torturin’, too.”

“In this instance,” says Curtis, “I strongly recommend you take the advice, chiefly for your own health and safety. As you’ve noted, you’re still alive. Indeed, we have no intention of killing you— _provided_ ,” he pauses emphatically, “that we are able to have our very frank conversation.”

“Not sure I like the sound’a that,” mumbles Zane, and then, at a raise of Curtis’ perfectly-sculpted brows, “Oh, all right. Zane Flynt, shutting up.”

“Good,” Curtis says, adding aside to Vivian, “If he interrupts again, I’ll gag him.”

The amount of will Zane has to apply not to say anything about _that_ nearly kills him all on its own.

“Right,” says Vivian, tensely. “So. Obviously, the decimation of our second- to fourth-quarter profits cannot go unpunished. Our original plan was to simply kill you, but—after crunching the numbers, we came to the conclusion that it would be more beneficial to leave you alive, simply on the basis of the amount of damage you do to our competitors.”

“If you want to hire me,” Zane starts, and quickly cuts himself off as Curtis makes a move to rise. “Sorry! Sorry. Go on about the not killin’ me. _Lovin’_ this plan.”

“What this leaves us with,” Vivian continues, rather more forcefully, “is a dilemma. How do we dole out the appropriate punishment, leave you alive, and still ensure that no further harm comes to Anshin?” She smiles blandly at Curtis. “We believe we’ve come to a solution to that one, as well.”

“Is the solution to pay me?” Zane wants to know. “’Cause, let me tell you, that one works like a _charm_.”

Vivian reaches over to the implement on the tray, and picks it gingerly up, drawing Zane’s gaze inevitably to the object. “No, mercenary, we’re not going to pay you.” She toys with the odd device, turning it end-over-end in her hands, not looking up. “There’s always a higher bidder—that’s no guarantee.” She lifts her head, her mouth stretched in a cruel smile. “At Anshin, we shield ourselves with fire.”

“We’ve decided that the only way to ensure that our message truly gets through is to apply the most age-old method of all.” The smile Zane receives from Curtis is a perfect match for his sister’s, cruel and bloodless, still impossibly pretty. “Eye for an eye.”

“Er,” says Zane.

And looks back over to Vivian.

Who smiles wider, even as his gaze falls to the implement in her hands.

Zane’s mouth is suddenly very dry.

He licks his lips, and says, “Listen, we can talk about this, can’t we? I mean, there’s no need to start goin’ after anybody’s eyeballs.” He doesn’t look at the device in Vivian’s hands. “I’ll leave Anshin alone, and take care not to damage anything belongin’ to you! Free o’ charge, even. How’s that, eh?” He tries for a smile, curdled by the sudden sour fear in his stomach. “Swear on me grave.”

A moment of silence, Zane’s heart suddenly beating oh-so-fast in his chest, and:

Vivian laughs, high and mean, and gives a slow shake of her head. “Oh, mercenary,” she says. “What makes you think we’d ever trust a word you say?” She touches a button on the device, and Zane hears a low hum as it powers on. “It’s like we said. Anshin deals in guarantees.”

The scoop changes color from a matte gray to a vivid, superheated orange—for cauterization, Zane thinks distantly. That makes sense; they’ve said they don’t want to kill him.

He can’t seem to look away. His heart pounds in his ears, the noise drowning out all other sound.

Vivian asks him a question, and Zane says, “What?” the word coming out in a low mumble.

“I said,” repeats Vivian, her voice suddenly fading back in, “which one do you want to keep.”

Zane feels sick. “I don’t . . .”

“If you don’t choose,” Vivian overrides him, “I will choose one for you.”

He hears himself say, “The right one. I want to keep the right one.”

And then Vivian is advancing on him, still smiling that appalling smile, Curtis smiling his pretty diamond-sharp own—

—and Zane sucks in a breath, thinking, _Really feckin shat the bed on this one, boy-o—_

—and then Vivian leans in, and Zane isn’t thinking at all.

*

Afterward, they dump him in the street—right next to the garbage bins, leaving Zane sprawled beside the reeking pile of refuse. They don’t give him any painkillers, but Curtis does leave him a bottle of white rum, which tastes like shite but has the benefit of being 150 proof.

Zane lies in the garbage, and drinks himself—blind.

Ha.

_Good one, Zane-boy._

When he’s finally run out of rum he staggers up—an admittedly complicated affair—and into the street, hailing the first taxi he sees with a wave of the bottle. The car pulls over; Zane collapses inside, and winces as the taxibot burbles, “ _Heyyy,_ buddy! Wow, you don’t look so good. You need a lift to the hospital?”

Zane considers this. “Nearest bar.”

“You’re the boss,” says the taxibot, cheerfully.

It takes him to a total dive two streets over from the Anshin complex, where the quality of the neighborhood nosedives straight from corporate-slick into sleazy-degenerate. Zane doesn’t mind; spends the rest of the day running up his tab, and generally getting totally, unreservedly plastered.

The day after that, he goes to the hospital.

*

Everything that remains of his advance funds goes into the new eye. Not enough there for the good stuff, but he’s at least able to select an only slightly outdated model: it comes with basic visual and standard discernment, saving him the trouble of being stuck seeing black-and-white out of one eye.

After the surgery the medbots keep him for observation, fussing over the integration of the cybernetic. (His optic nerve, Zane is informed, had been written off as a loss; they’ve replaced it entirely, thank you, sir, added it to your bill.) Zane puts up with this for a week, and then bitches his way into a discharge, throwing ready-to-hand objects at the head of his assigned medbot. The bureaucracy bots grow significantly more cooperative after one of those objects proves to be a homemade lithium ion battery hand grenade, salvaged from an unused beeper.

On escaping his confinement Zane hits the nearest burger joint—he’d kill for something that doesn’t taste like it came out of a cafeteria vat, and that’s not even a euphemism—pawns most of his remaining gear, and buys a ticket for the first commercial liner headed out-system. He doesn’t give any thought to his destination, only checking to make sure there’s no Anshin presence within lightyears. He’s done being picky, and there’s always someone in need of a hired gun.

Chances are work will find him, anyway. He’ll be fine; Zane Flynt always lands on his feet.

_Yeah. On his feet and down an eye, anyway . . ._

He reaches the shuttleport just in time to miss the midday run to the orbital station, which is entirely in-line with his luck and means he has to spend an extra two hours downside cooling his heels. Zane bitches heartlessly at the ticket attendant, dumps his sole remaining bag in the waiting area— _damn_ the equipment loss—and stalks irritably off to the lav, wishing he’d demanded more painkillers from the bots. Pain is flaring up in his face, and he’s pretty sure the last round is wearing off.

When he’s finished there he stops at the sink, and takes to unwrapping the bandages from around his head and his face. Removing a week’s worth of itchy gauze is a bliss on par with popping a molly, and he vents a sigh as he dumps it all in the bin.

Then he looks up, and gets his first glimpse of—and _with_ —his new eye.

The face that stares blearily back at him from the mirror is, all things considered, only slightly the worse for wear. Mild swelling lingers around his nose from the surgery, and his eyelid and surrounding orbital are still an unpleasant raw red, skin freshly regrown. (This last hurts the worst, and itches like crazy; Zane prevails upon himself not to scratch by the simple expedient of having already attempted it once, and discovered that doing so hurts like a mother _._ )

His eye, though—

Zane blinks, and blinks again. The not-sclera of the cybernetic eyeball is a dull metallic gray, the pupil backlit a faint yellow. Taken against the pale blue of his human right eye the contrast is jarring, suggestive at first glance of something parasitic curled up and peering out from inside the socket. “Jesus, Mary ’n Joseph.”

The guy washing his hands at the next sink gives him a curious glance. “Rough night?”

“Somethin’ like that,” mutters Zane, and tests his visual range, looking all the way to the right, then the left. His depth and color perception seem fine, though there’s no way to be sure until he gets out to the firing range. Good enough for now, but—he’s certainly not about to score any dates.

He scrubs the sticky residue from the gauze off his hands, and trudges grimly back out.

Maybe he ought to get an eye patch, and lean hard into the rugged ol’ space pirate look, instead of just leaving it at _uncanny_. Better yet, get a digital one that connects to the base optics, as a stopgap until he can get a model with scan functions built in . . .

His return is greeted by an insistent beeping from inside his bag, his comm blowing up in the side pocket. Judging by the dirty looks thrown his way by the trio of women sprawled two seats away it’s been going off for a while, and Zane fishes the ECHO out to punch _Accept_ without looking.

The voice that pipes through his earbug just about makes his vision go red. “Sweet thing!” Rox’s voice is much too chipper for his fading painkillers, setting his teeth on edge. “I hear the Anshin twins not only failed to kill you, but even let you go free. Sorry about selling you out—no hard feelings?”

Zane shoves his bag off the seat and falls into it, propping his ECHO up on his chest. “Darlin’,” he drawls, matching precisely her pleasant tone, “the next time I see you, I’m puttin’ a bullet right through your pretty head.”

Rox is unperturbed by this declaration. “ _So_ short-sighted. Look, I’ll admit I wasn’t exactly looking out for you on this one”—Zane makes an incredulous sound—“but, in light of your apparent survival, it’s occurred that we could make a real business of this.” Over his indignant sputter, she presses on, “Suppose we split the Anshin reward in half, and do this again. You’ve got any number of outrageous live capture bounties out on your head—all we’d have to do is string them along. You get caught, we collect, I spring you out. It’s the perfect gig.”

“The _perfect_ —those Anshin psychopaths tore out my eye!” Zane stares furiously at his ECHO.

 _This_ gives Rox pause, though she recovers admirably, and, in his view, much too fast. “Collateral damage. Cybernetics are better than the real thing, anyway.”

“I prefer gettin’ mine under sedation,” snarls Zane, and then, struck by the thought, “Was there even a hit out on that poor Hyperion bastard, or was that all just part o’ your elaborate setup?”

“Oh, there was,” Rox assures him. “Very elegant, don’t you think? You take out the mark, Anshin gets you delivered gift-wrapped, I collect twice.” She pauses. “You could, too, of course. Offer’s still on the table.”

“You must be jokin’.” Not that half the Anshin reward money wouldn’t be a bad consolation prize, but—“Y’want me to let myself get caught, lose ’nother eye—or whatever body part the next mob o’ psychopaths decides to keep as a souvenir—’n trust that you won’t walk away with the money?” A dull ache starts up around his left eye, regrown skin pulled over-tight by his scowl. “I’ll pass on piece-meal suicide, thanks.”

“No pain, no gain,” Rox brushes this off, “and there’s so _much_ to gain. Or have you actually not seen your bounty?” She doesn’t give him a chance to answer, warming to her pitch. “Just think, you’d never have to track or down another mark ever again. Two or three rounds of this, and both of us are set for _life_. Buy whatever cybernetics you want, retire early to Aquator—nothing but beaches and drinks with little umbrellas for as far as your new eye can see.”

“Go kiss a ratch,” Zane says, with feeling. “ _Several_ ratches. Make love to a whole bleedin’ ratch hive, for preference.” Then, momentarily diverted from ire by the critical flaw in her argument, “I happen to _like_ my job, thank you very much. Retire, huh! Some lure.”

“Really, sweet thing?” He can practically the doubting tilt of her head. “Hunting corporate shills across the galaxy, putting them out of their misery, right up until you die—that’s what you want?”

“Beats dyin’ early for you.” Zane grimaces. “G’bye, Rox. See you on t’other end o’ my rifle.”

“Your loss,” says Rox, and cuts the comm. Zane’s jaw clicks shut on another acerbic reply; damn her for managing to get in the last word.

He shakes his head, and flops unhappily back in his seat, ECHO falling against his chest.

The thing is, he isn’t even lying about liking the black ops life. He just likes it a lot more when it doesn’t feature evil double-crossing harpies, and maybe not right now, on this planet, with half his face still smarting from cybernetic surgery and synth-skin repairs.

Damn, but he wishes he’d gotten more painkillers from the bots.

He’s startled out of brooding over this particular miscalculation by another incoming call, his ECHO beeping furiously from where he’s balancing it now on his knee. The caller ID is blocked; Zane considers hitting _Reject_ , but gives up and accepts it, on the basis that if it’s Rox again he’ll hang up, and maybe also get in the last word. “Flynt.”

The voice that pours out of the ECHO definitely isn’t Rox. “Zane, my man!”

Zane sits forward despite himself, his brows rising—which _also_ hurts, damn it to hell. “Barry? Shite, it’s been a while.”

“Listen, I’d love to make like this is a social call, but you know how it is. There’s this job . . .” Barry launches into the details, which Zane promptly tunes out.

He really does like his job, he reflects as Barry burbles. He’s not kidding himself about that one; Zane likes the rush, and the risk, and the part where he’s, _usually_ , better at it than everyone else. It’s what he’s made for, it’s what he’s been doing ever since he escaped off his home dirtball, and it sure as hell is what the corporate slimeballs shell out for. It’s what he’s going to keep right on doing up until he dies, probably on assignment and damn well not anytime soon.

But.

His face is _really_ starting to hurt.

“G’bye, Barry,” says Zane, and hangs up.

He sets the ECHO device on silent, shoves it down into his bag, and settles back into his seat for a doze. It’s cold at the shuttleport—it’s cold at _every_ shuttleport, everywhere in the six galaxies, insofar as Zane can tell—but he’s tired enough not to be deterred, merely burrowing deeper into his jacket.

He really _does_ like his job.

It’s just that, sometimes, what he really needs is a _break._

Next time, he promises himself as he drifts off. Next time, he really will take that job in janitorial.


End file.
